I am alone in a dark library with a bat

The library is closed, I’m the only one here (catching up on some paper work and of course Doping) and there’s a cute little bat flying in a lunatic circle in the lobby of the building. I’ve tried shooing him to the door (which I propped open) but no-go, he just circles wider and more elliptically. He’s a little thing (the size of a small mouse except with parakeet sized wings) and I’m pretty sure at his current rate of flight he’ll be dead by morning. They were working on the elevators earlier and had the shafts open (with “Do Not Cross” tape) and I’m guessing he flew down the shaft.

Any suggestions for getting a bat to go out the front door?

Can you turn out the lights inside? Bats have pretty good sight, so if you make a big lit frame, it might be more obvious for him.

Nosferatu!

I came into work on a Saturday once, at a former job to find a bat sailing up and down and long hallway. I lured it into an empty classroom and eventually chivvied out the window into a nearby tree as gently as possible.

Sit as far from the door as you can (so you don’t scare him away) and fling some small objects, like paper clips or small papper wads, through it. Most bats are insectivores and their echolocation is superbly adapted to detecting and following small, fast-moving objects. Hopefully you can get him to follow one outside, so you can close the door.

That, or chase him out with some garlic cloves.

I have no advice, except on what *not *to do with bats in a library:

My mom used to run the elementary school libraries in our district. She had an office in one of the school libraries. One morning she came in, and was confronted by a library full of bats! Dead, dying, and annoyed bats, who had naturally spread their evidence around. You see, the school had an infestation of bats in the roof, and so, one afternoon, a work crew went up there and sealed up all the vents, thus keeping the bats out of their home. Or at least, if bats were daytime creatures, that’s what would have happened. Instead, of course, the bats were sealed in, and then got into the library through the vents in an attempt to escape.

I have no idea what the school administrators were thinking, except that they probably weren’t. So anyway, don’t seal up the outside vents during the day. And good luck getting the little bat out.

The first thought that came to mind was threaten him with having to spend Christmas with your sister but since he doesn’t know you very well, that might not work. :smiley:

I got nuttin’. I am curious as to how this plays out though.

I’d try opening the place up a little, if at all possible. Bats, of course, find direction by echolocation, and he’ll eventually find an opening. Course, it’s cold outside, and you may not be able or inclined to jockey the windows open…

Alone in a darkened library with a bat, eh? I would stare into the fireplace as I grimly contemplated my vigilante persona and how to best strike terror among the cowardly and superstitious criminal element. A creature of the night, perhaps…but what?..but what?

I think this means that you have to dress up like a bat and fight crime.

Or maybe dress up like a criminal and fight bats.

If Andy Roony died in the middle of a hiccup, he would probably come back to scour the earth looking for any damn way to end hell, which is an endless stream of hiccups. And if he did come back, and if he read the Dope, this is how I imagine the OP would read:

This happened to me once, on an evening not much unlike this one, which is amazing considering the evening changes depending on where you read this. Only, it was not a library, but it was a large building, possibly a cave or a courthouse or a courthose cave, something architects call Brutalism. Also, there was no bat, but there was this old woman, topless from the bottom down, claiming to be the messiah, the Son of God, the one with an unbelievable turnip meatloaf recipe. Upside down was she, atleast from my point of view on the skylight, as she ran back and forth between the bunks.

Oh, yeah, it wasn’t a courthouse, it was an orphanarium, a place to view orphans with telescopes, only I refused to use mirrors to see what I could see almost as good by squinting my eyes.

Anyway, the old woman, the Son of God, with floral clothes and pig eye sized pearls and sensible orthopedic shoes on her hands, was scaring the children. They were screaming, something in Hungarian, about protecting their stock portfolios, only now that I am reading this I just realized I don’t know Hungarian

Ah, and that brings me to another point, that the old woman was not wearing shoes for hands or feet for shoes, but she was wearing wings for arms and feet for feet. And it wasn’t an orphanarium, a place to view orphans with telescopes, but a library, a place to hold books on what used to be bunks but are more likely shelves.

So I was in the library, on the skylight - well actually, not on the skylight, but probably sitting inside of it, what used to be an orphanarium - watching this old woman with arms for wings and feet for feet flying between shelves of what used to be orpahns but what some call books, when it came to me. Untill that night, or this night - the night I was in a darkened library, watching this bat fly between shelves - I really never knew that bats spoke Hungarian.

Why do bats need to know Hungarian when they don’t have any legs? I hate you, you muscle bags and flesh sacks, I hate you all.

Well it ends rather anticlimactically. I never was able to get him to “go to the light” of the front doorway (which I didn’t feel comfortable leaving open for, as I said, we’re closed), but I left the door to one of the stairwells open and he did go in there. A missing panel at the top provides attic access seven floors above, and since that’s in all likelihood where he came from (there were hundreds of bats in the attic at one point, but most of them moved west when casino gambling was legalized in search of better jobs) he should be happy eventually, or else there’ll be a dead bat in the stairwell (and a song in my heart) come morning.

This library was built in several phases so the attics are pretty cool- very labrynthine over several stories, a sort of Anne Frank Towers. I was familiar with the bats (there’s a veritable gunpowder factory in one of the attics) but this was the first time I’ve met one. They’re really cute little suckers. It’s a shame they’re an incarnate transportation unit for the forces of evil and as such are all going to writhe in the fiery pits for all eternity, cause they’re way cuter than gerbils.

I have always wanted to be in a closed library, but alas, I don’t work there, so its not possible.

[QUOTE=Sampiro]
Well it ends rather anticlimactically. I never was able to get him to “go to the light” of the front doorway (which I didn’t feel comfortable leaving open for, as I said, we’re closed), but I left the door to one of the stairwells open and he did go in there.

[QUOTE]

Just saw this thread, too late, but I have a suggestion fopr next time.

I found a bat once flying in tight, fast circles in the spare bedroom of our condo.

I can’t emphasize enough how weird it was. The condo is a middle floor, no attic; there were no open windows; the front tdoor opens into an atrium with a second door, making it unlikely an animal could fly right in.

The only possible means of entry we suspect is a large black plastic tarpaulin a friend had brought by the previous day to use as a backdrop for photography. Maybe the bat had been sleeping in a fold of it.

Anyway, the little guy was going a mile a minute. He looked pretty healthy, not mangy or feeble. we opened the window, but; like your bat, he wouldn’t go out.

So I had a bright idea for taking advantage of his sonar. Went and fetched an umbrella for myself and another for my wife. We opened them and held them in front of us like shields, then closed in on the circling bat. He shied away from the umbrella barrier (“the walls are closing in!!!”), and we herded him out the window without damage to any of the parties involved.

If you don’t have an umbrella, maybe a large signboard or the like would do. The handles of the umbrellas let us keep our hands away from the edge and avoid contact, which wouldn’t work so well with a large flat board, but the principle is otherwise similar.

Sailboat

Wouldn’t turning on outdoor lights help? The lights would attract moths, which would draw the bat outside…